City Journal Weighs In on Crumbling Infrastructure

City Journal Weighs In on Crumbling Infrastructure::

As a nation, we’ve long borrowed from our future; everybody knows about the inevitable Social Security and Medicare crises that will happen in the next three decades as the number of retirees expands in relation to the number of workers. Far fewer people understand that we’ve also been borrowing from our past. The federal highway system, the backbone of America’s modern economy, turned 50 last year. But, as I wrote in Forbes magazine in April, we haven’t spent enough, or thought enough, to keep it—and other physical assets that previous generations built—in good working order. We spend only 60 percent of what’s needed to keep roads in good condition, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. In New York State, for instance, 35 percent of major roads are in “poor or mediocre condition,” the ASCE says, while 38 percent of bridges are “structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.”

Even where they’re safe enough, transportation assets suffer from obsolescence, as traffic and vehicle weights increase annually while road spending lags

---

yet we're building 'bridges to nowhere" and shelling millions to greedy developers like Bruce Ratner to further tax the infrastructure.